Researchers followed 2002 adults for 6.3 years. They asked them to sit and rise. A perfect score was 10 points – 5 points for sitting and 5 points for getting up without touching knees, legs, hands, or arms to the floor. Participants lost 1 point for each body part they leaned on. They lost a half point if they wobbled.

“A composite score below 8 (that is, requiring more than one hand or knee support to sit and rise from the floor in a stable way) were associated with 2–5 fold higher death rates over the 6.3 year study period. By contrast, scores in the range of 8–10 indicated a particularly low risk of death during the tracking period. “Even more relevant,” reported the investigators, “is the fact that a 1-point increment in the [sitting-rising] score was related to a 21% reduction in mortality.”

Yikes, I don’t think I could do this at my age today, though I was quite nimble when younger. (Haha, just tried it–got my posterior about 6 inches from the floor and fell onto it–had to put hands back to catch myself!)